THE BUBBLE BURSTS
Complacent Mr Holmes saw him safely off by the last train to Nice,
before retiring for the night to his own snug quarters. ’Tis thus one
prepares one’s pigeons for the plucking. When Franz arrived at the
hotel, he called for more champagne, to celebrate his victory; and,
failing other friends, shared drinks with the waiter.
Next morning, he was over again at Monte Carlo betimes, though with a
chastening headache. He got a seat at once, and sat down to it like a
man who means to win a fortune. His experience of yesterday had only
strengthened his preconceived belief in the infallibility of his System.
Encouraged by luck, he began playing from the outset now on the basis of
staking five louis a time on each turn of the roulette wheel. For the
first two or three twirls, fortune still went with him. He won as easily
as he had won the preceding evening. But, after a few hazards, the
chance began to change; he lost once, twice, thrice, as quickly as he
had won at the outset of his playing. Presently, he was aware of Mr
Holmes at his side, watching his play with a self-restrained smile of
cynical indifference. That smile put Franz Lindner at once upon his
mettle. He began to plunge desperately. Five louis on black;—they went
like water. Five louis on _manque_ were equally unsuccessful. Time after
time Franz played; and time after time he lost again. His winnings had
gone down now to two hundred louis. He began to reflect whether it
mightn’t be wise to reduce his stake again for a while, during this run
of ill-luck, from five louis to two. He even tried it once; but a
disapproving murmur from a lady behind decided him to stick to the game
he had so far been playing. “You should never change your stakes,” she
said, “when you’re losing, you know; it’s an insult to chance, and it
brings bad luck with it.” Franz was too good a Tyroler not to be
thoroughly superstitious; so he accepted the bystander’s disinterested
advice, and continued to put down his five gold pieces.
But still, luck was hard. If it’s easy to win three hundred pounds at a
go, it’s easier still to lose them. And yet, Franz felt sure that,
sooner or later, the System _must_ win; the System was infallible; his
friend the betting man had made all that so clear to him. Recklessly and
desperately he hurried on with his game—five louis, five louis, five
louis once more—lost, lost, lost, lost—till he was sick and tired of
it. Now and again, luck varied, to be sure, for a time, as it had varied
yesterday; but while yesterday with minor fluctuations it steadily rose,
to-day with minor fluctuations it as steadily fell again. By two o’clock
that afternoon, he had lost the whole of his last night’s winnings, and
was reduced once more to his original capital.
He was going to stake yet again, somewhat haggard and feverish, when
Joaquin Holmes, who had been watching him with the profoundest interest,
tapped him lightly on the arm and invited him to luncheon. “You want
food,” he said “—and wine. After a good glass of Mumm, you’ll play
better and stronger again!” In the altered state of the money-market,
Franz felt himself less punctilious on the score of treats than the day
before; he accepted the lunch, and the offer of champagne, with
despondent alacrity. The Seer, ever prudent, stood a bottle of the best
wine the cellar of the Hotel de Paris could produce. It was excellent
and invigorating. As lunch proceeded, Franz’s spirits returned; the
champagne supplied him with fresh sinews of war—Dutch courage for the
onset. “If I were you, Von Forstemann,” the Seer said in his friendliest
and most insinuating tone, “I wouldn’t play any more. You’re sure to
lose in the end by it.” But Franz stood by his colours. “Ah, no,” he
answered, smiling, “I can’t lose. I’ve got a System. It’s been tried
before. A friend of mine, do you know, made twenty thousand pounds in
these very rooms by it.”
Flushed and fired by his wine, he went back to the tables. The Seer paid
the bill for their lunch, and followed him. Franz had found another
seat, and was deep in his play. But he lost, lost, lost—won a
little—then lost again. All the afternoon long, he kept on losing. The
Seer walked about, exchanging a word or two at times with friends and
with ladies of his acquaintance (some of whose faces Franz fancied he
had seen before at the London Pavilion), but came back again to his side
after each such excursion, with friendly persistence.
“How much have you lost now?” he asked each time.
And Franz, very shamefaced, yet proud in a way that he could own to such
losses, made answer again and again, as the case might be, “A hundred
and twenty,” “Two hundred and thirty,” “Three hundred and twenty-seven.”
_Ach Gott_, it was pitiful!
At last, about six o’clock, the Tyroler found himself reduced to a
hundred and fifty pounds of his original capital. He couldn’t understand
it; this was strange, very strange; the System somehow didn’t seem to
work as it ought to do. In his despair, he almost began to disbelieve in
its virtues. Just then, the Seer strolled casually by once more,
chatting gaily to a lady. He paused, and looked at Franz. In the thirst
for human sympathy we all feel at such times, Franz beckoned him up with
one hand, and confided to him in a hoarse whisper the painful state of
his exchequer. “Come out and have a drink,” the Seer said, bending low,
with his most courteous manner. “Let’s work this thing out. Just you
show me your System?”
Franz followed him blindly across to the café opposite. The Seer ordered
two cognacs and a syphon of soda-water. “Now, tell me how you do it,” he
said, in a very grave voice. And, with some little reluctance, looking
down at the table, Franz proceeded to disclose to his attentive listener
the main points of his System.
It was a transparent fallacy, of course. Such systems always are; and
the Seer, who was no fool at the doctrine of chances, saw through it at
a glance. His lip curled lightly. “You’re a good mathematician?” he
asked, with a well-suppressed sneer.
And Franz was obliged perforce to admit, in this critical moment, that
he had got no further in that abstruse science than the first four rules
of arithmetic.
The Seer assumed his kindliest and most didactic manner. “Now, you look
here, Herr von Forstemann,” he said, leaning over towards his new friend
confidentially; “you’ve allowed yourself to be duped; you’ve been
grossly imposed upon. I can show you in a minute your System’s all bosh.
The bank stands always its regular chance to win, no matter what you do,
and it dodges you exactly where you think you’ve dodged it.”
He took out a pencil and paper, and began with great show of care and
patience to make the fallacy as clear as day to his unwilling pupil.
Franz leant over him and looked. Step by step the clever American
unravelled before his eyes all the tangled mass of false assumptions and
baseless conclusions Franz called his System. Poor Franz stood aghast;
the demolition was patent, irresistible, crushing. Joaquin Holmes was in
his element; he was a specialist on games of chance; he demonstrated
with loving care that in this case, as in all others, the bank had
exactly thirty-seven chances for itself, against thirty-six for the
players. Franz saw it with his own eyes: sorely against his will he was
forced to see it. He couldn’t gainsay it: it was clear as mud; he could
only murmur in a feebly illogical way, “But my friend made twenty
thousand pounds in these rooms right off with it.”
The Seer was remorseless. “Accident!” he answered, calmly, with a bland
wave of the hand. “Pure luck! Coincidence! And if it happened once, by a
mere fluke, to pull itself off so well, all the less reason to believe
such a wonderful sequence of happy shots would ever manage to repeat
itself. The bank stands always its fixed chance to win in a certain
proportion; by good fortune you may circumvent it, by calculation,
never!”
Franz was convinced against his will. But the blow was an appalling one.
He had lost three hundred and fifty pounds already; he saw no hope of
recovering it. And, what was far worse, he had practically lost twenty
thousand into the bargain. During all those years while he had been
saving and scraping, he had considered his fortune as good as made, if
he could but once go to Monte Carlo with five hundred pounds of ready
money in his pocket. In five short minutes the affable stranger had
knocked the bottom out of his drum—demolished the whole vast
superstructure of false facts and bad reasoning Franz had reared so
carefully; and now, like a house of cards, it had tumbled about his
ears, leaving the poor duped Tyroler blankly hopeless and miserable.
The reaction was painful and piteous to behold. From a potential
millionaire, Franz descended at once to be the owner of a paltry hundred
and fifty pounds in English money. The Seer did his best in these
straits to console and comfort him. He pointed out that while no man can
ensure a fortune at games of chance by trying to play on a system, any
man may have the good luck to win large sums if he treats it frankly as
a question of fortune, not of deliberate planning. “Only,” he added,
with a significant glance towards the Casino, “it’s foolish to play
where one backs one’s luck against a public bank which stands to win, by
its very constitution, a certain regular proportion of all money staked
against it.”
His words fell on stony ground. Franz was simply inconsolable. The
longer he looked at those irrefragable calculations, the more clearly
did he recognise now that the Seer was right, and the System on which he
had staked his all was a pure delusion. But Mr Joaquin Holmes extended
him still the most obtrusive sympathy. “I’m awfully sorry for you, Herr
von Forstemann,” he said, over and over again, regarding his figures
sideways. “This has been a hard trial to you. But you mustn’t give up
because you’ve been bitten once. Sooner or later, luck must turn. You’ve
lost a great deal; all the sooner, then, must it change for you. Give me
the pleasure of dining with you at the restaurant round the corner.
You’ll see things in a truer light, you know, when you’ve digested your
dinner.”
Franz followed him mechanically. He had no heart for anything. The Seer
ordered a choice repast, and plied his pigeon well with the best wines
in the cellar. All the while, as they dined, he harped still on three
chords—his own persistent ill-luck at all games of chance; the folly of
playing where the odds are against you, no matter how little, at a
public table; and the certainty of winning back, on the average, what
you’ve lost, if only you play long enough at even betting.
Emotions, once well roused, tend to flow on unchecked, in spite of
temporary obstacles, in an accustomed channel. As the dinner digested
itself, and the Dry Monopole fired Franz’s brain once more, the
thrasonic mood of the gambler came over him yet again as strong as ever.
Like a born braggart that he was, a true Tyrolese Robbler, he began to
boast in thick tones of how he would get the better still of those
swindling tables. The Seer encouraged him to the echo in this gallant
resolution, but thought ill of his chances at the unfair roulette-board,
against the certain dead-weight of a mathematical calculation. “Come up
with me to my room after dinner,” he put in, carelessly, “and I’ll show
you a little game I learnt when I went buck-shooting in the Rockies some
years ago. It’s perfectly fair and square, with no sort of advantage to
one side over the other. None of your beastly zeros: all even chances. I
won’t play it with you myself—or at least, only for a turn or two, just
to show you how it’s done—I’m so deuced unlucky. But there are lots of
fellows around who’ll be glad enough to give you a chance of your
revenge; and, in my opinion, it’s just about the very evenest game a
sensible man ever put his money down upon.”
Franz submitted to be taught with a very good grace. He was ready enough
now for anything on earth that would help him to win back his solid lost
sovereigns. They went round to a large hotel in the direction of La
Condamine. People were moving in and out of the doorway by degrees, for
it was just after dinner, and the town was crowded. Franz followed the
Seer upstairs to a nicely furnished bedroom on the second floor,
arranged as a salon, with an alcove for the bed, after the continental
fashion. Nobody took much notice of them; come and go is the rule at
Monte Carlo everywhere; and, besides, Mr Joaquin Holmes, that affable
new-comer, was very much in the habit of taking strangers to play in his
bedroom.
They sat down at the table, and the Seer, after much show of fumbling in
his box, produces at last a pack of English cards, the cover still
unbroken. With an innocent air of very slight acquaintance with the game
he had proposed, he shuffled and cut them. “Let me see,” he said,
knitting his brows, and pretending to recollect. “It’s like this, I
think. Ah, yes, I remember.” And he dealt out a card to himself, and
another to Franz, with most ingenious carelessness.
Then he went on to explain in very glowing terms the simplicity of this
game, and its peculiar guilelessness. “You back your card for what you
like, and if I choose, I double you. You see, it’s even chances. We each
stand to win equally. It’s easy as A.B.C. But my luck’s so bad, I won’t
play you for money. Let’s stake an imaginary five pounds on the
turn-up.”
They tried a deal or two, for love, on this imaginary basis, and Franz
won twice out of three times. He wished it had been for sovereigns. He
tried again and again, the Seer manipulating his pack all the time with
conspicuous awkwardness, and managing to lose with surprising
regularity. What a pity the man was so shy of tempting fate, Franz
thought; though, to be sure, it was no wonder. For he lost, lost, lost,
with almost incredible persistence. Still, Franz was annoyed to think
that so many lucky shots, at so even a game, should all go for nothing.
And he himself—why, he could win at this play like wildfire. If only he
could find such a pigeon to pluck! He’d drain his man dry of all he had
at a sitting!
“Come, put a louis on it!” he exclaimed at last, with a “Who’s afraid”
sort of air, to the reluctant stranger.
The Coloradan hesitated. He pulled out a purse full of notes and gold.
“No; I can’t go to a louis,” he answered, gingerly, after a pause. “I’ve
such beastly bad luck. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do; I’ll lay you ten
francs on it!”
His air was candid enough to disarm the most suspicious mind. He played,
and lost. Franz picked the coins up nimbly. “Try it again,” he said,
with a broad smile; and Joaquin Holmes tried it. Four times running
Franz won; then the American lost patience. “I’ll go you a louis,” he
cried, warming up, and drawing a coin from his purse. Franz took him,
and won it. At that, Holmes, as the Robbler thought, lost his head and
grew frantic. He plunged; he doubled; he lost; he cursed his luck; and
once more he boldly plunged again. Now and then, to be sure, he won; but
’twas always on the times when he omitted to double. This was a
first-rate game, Franz thought; he was winning back his own again.
After a while, the Seer pulled up his chair, and settled down to it
seriously. “I’m a devil of a gambler,” he said, with a smile, “when once
I get well into it. I won’t leave off now till you’ve broken my bank,
and got my bottom dollar. I’ve eight hundred pounds here”—which was a
simple trade lie—“and I won’t stop now till I’ve lost every penny of
it.”
Ha, ha; that was game! They buckled to in earnest. Franz played with a
will. He won, won, won; he laughed loud; he picked up gaily; then,
suddenly, strange to say, he lost, lost, lost again. All at once, the
Seer’s fingers seemed to go like lightning. He dealt fast and furious;
he doubled every time; luck had somehow changed; he was winning now
heavily. Franz didn’t think quite so well of the game as it proceeded;
he began to regard it, in fact, as little short of a swindle. But, as
his pile diminished, the Seer gave him scant time to reflect between
deals. “Stake! I double you!” Flash went the card; the Seer raked in the
money. That was very strong champagne, and Franz’s head was reeling.
Still he played, played, played, lost, lost, lost, yet played again. His
pile was dwindling now with appalling rapidity. He took a pull at the
brandy and soda the Seer had obligingly placed by his side. What was
this? The affable stranger was clearing him out every time. Franz began
to suspect a plant. Could the man be a swindler?
He glanced at his little heap. A cold thrill coursed through him. Only
seven louis left! When those seven were gone—why, then he would be
penniless!
The Seer dealt again. With a loud German oath, Franz seized his hand and
stopped it. “I _saw_ you do it,” he cried. “You rogue, I’ve found you
out! You felt one card, changed it, and then pushed out another.”
The Seer sprang up angrily. “That’s an imputation on my _honour_,” he
cried, standing up and facing him with an air of indignant virtue. “I’m
an English gentleman. If you insult me like that——”
But before he could say another word,—quick as thought, a knife flashed
in the air with unspeakable swiftness. The Seer’s hand darted into his
pocket for the trusty six-shooter. It was dagger against pistol, Tyroler
against Westerner. But Franz was too sharp for him. Before the
Coloradan’s deft fingers could reach the trigger of the revolver, that
keen blade was buried deep in his exposed left breast—buried deep and
gurgling. Without a word, without a groan, the American dropped back
short into the easy-chair he had that moment quitted. Blood spurted from
the wound—spurted fast in little jets. It had penetrated his heart. He
was dead in a second.
In less time than it takes to say it, Franz realised what he had done,
and pulled himself together from his paroxysm of passion. Leaving the
notes where they lay, he crammed his own gold hastily into his waistcoat
pocket. He let the knife stop in the wound; it was in no way
compromising. Then he opened the door, and walked calmly out, and down
the broad stone steps, and into the streets of Monte Carlo.